


together, to be.

by HumptyDumpty



Category: The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: F/M, one of Daisy's visits when they're still sneaking around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 23:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5312021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HumptyDumpty/pseuds/HumptyDumpty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Gatsby reaches out his arms to tighten his grip around the woman he loves and, touching her forehead with his, surrenders himself to the next nightmare, hoping that maybe her presence can save him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	together, to be.

**Author's Note:**

> protect Jay Gatsby at all costs

Sometimes, when Daisy visits, he wakes up in the middle of the night and finds himself holding nothing at all. They have moved in their sleep, tossed and turned away from each other, and in the darkness it's the same as being alone until he can finally hear she breathing over the silence that divides them. Gatsby reaches out his arms to tighten his grip around the woman he loves and, touching her forehead with his, surrenders himself to the next nightmare, hoping that maybe her presence can save him. 

Daisy is a being that transcends time. She most certainly doesn't belong to the now, and he won't surrender her to the past. Daisy belongs in his arms as the green light in his eyes, but he can finally grasp her. He can grasp her.

Morning comes. He is always the first to rise, that comes with his job, but there's a great pleasure in it, for sitting by the bedside he can admire her sleeping face, radiating a sense of peace that he hadn't known before. He fears he might resent her for marrying Tom Buchanan, but that disappears very quickly, because he knows she didn't have a choice: given that, she will become his for sure. Furthermore, one couldn't be bitter about something that hasn't happened, as soon they would pick up right from where they left off. 

He thinks he will get used to it immediately. The majority of his life spent drawing out the canvas, it comes so natural as the projection of his mind itself.

Once she wakes, it's the present again. They have breakfast in bed and today she is calm. From that point onwards, they both know that time will pass faster and she will have to go sooner than she would like to; but she always does.

There are three moments to their meetings: the joyful haste of holding each other again, which weakens during the night and is replaced by an afterfeeling of fleeting familiarity, as today, or subtle misplacedness, either followed by the relentlessness of goodbye.

He watches from the window as she leaves, placing a hand on the glass to discover a barrier between them. He stays like that until the car can't be seen anymore, and then some, breathing in the newfound loneliness. All that remains is a faint trace of her scent.

Even that would disappear if he were to go greet Nick, who's just having breakfast in the house nearby, newspaper in hand. And what would Gatsby say? Perhaps tell him how Daisy's hair hasn't changed at all, it might be shorter but it's as bright and soft as ever; how her lips still fit perfectly with his; that every part of her body was made to be kissed.

He can't say any of that, and whatever he said, Nick would ask: where is Daisy now?, or avoid the topic altogether, and Gatsby would shake his head to himself as to say not yet, but it's indeed going to happen, I feel it closer to happening every passing day. Chitchat a while, then return home with those words in mind.

But Nick has already gone inside. Gatsby moves away from the window and, on his way to the telephone, walks in front of the bedroom where some servant has made the bed. There is no trace of their encounter, as if she had never been there in an ordinary day, and the sheets must have gone cold.

Tonight, he will sleep alone still, knowing that good things come to those who wait. She just needs a little more time, and for her sake, he can be a patient man.


End file.
